Читать книгу Bone Crusher - Linda Rosencrance - Страница 13

Toward the end of October, a corrections officer (CO) from the Tazewell County Jail called Detective Hal Harper to let him know that an inmate had some information about Brenda Erving for the task force.

Her name was Tyresa, and she had known Brenda for about five years. The last time “Ty” saw Brenda was a couple days before Brenda was murdered. Ty told the detective that Brenda used to stay at Brenda’s uncle Johnny’s house on Madison Park Street in Peoria. According to Ty, Brenda and a guy named Kevin, a known drug user, were partying in his car, an older tan Oldsmobile or Buick, about a month and a half before she was killed.

Ty said Kevin was a white man, thirtysomething, with shorter blondish brown hair. He was about five feet nine inches tall and weighed 170 pounds. He always wore a baseball cap.

“One time me, Brenda, Kevin, and another guy were at her uncle Johnny’s house, and me and Kevin were in another room kind of on a drug binge,” she said. “Kevin started coming on to me. He was rubbing my neck. He was really aggressive. I pushed his hand away because I was so afraid. But he was so aggressive that he scratched me with his keys. I still have a scar.”

Ty also told Harper about another white guy who could have been involved with Brenda’s death. The man was about forty-five years old, five feet seven inches tall, 150 pounds. He had shoulder-length black hair and blue eyes. The guy drove an older, bigger pickup truck, with a loud exhaust. He lived in the Brimfield area and was a chicken farmer. He traveled to a number of towns in the area, making deliveries. Ty said the “chicken man,” as she called him, wanted to go out with Brenda, even though he was married.

Ty also gave Harper the names of two other men, who might have had something to do with Brenda’s death. One of the men was a registered sex offender who drove taxis in Peoria; the other was a guy who routinely let the girls use his house to party.

At the conclusion of the interview, Ty told Harper she wanted to do whatever she could to help police in their investigation.

Rhoshanda Fisher called police at the beginning of November with a story about her friend Teracita, who had been with a white guy who tried to choke her. She thought it might be the same guy who had killed the other black women. Police tracked thirty-one-year-old Teracita down at the Dwight Correctional Center in Dwight, Illinois, where she was being held for failure to appear in court. They met with Teracita on the morning of December 10. She agreed to tell them her story.

It happened in July. For as long as she could remember, Teracita had been selling herself on the street to feed her habit. That night she was walking near a local recreation center. It was around six in the evening. She was looking for drugs, when a white guy in a gray Chevy Blazer pulled up next to her. He was in his late thirties or early forties, tall with a slight beer belly. He had short blondish brown hair and grayish eyes. He hadn’t shaved for three or four days.

“I got about an ounce of cocaine,” he said. “Do you want to get high?”

That’s the only thing Teracita wanted to do, so she got in the guy’s truck, which was cluttered with tools. As she got in, she looked out the window and saw a man named Tarzie. She wasn’t sure if he saw her.

“Do you work construction?” she asked.

“I work on houses and do brickwork.”

Teracita didn’t have a good feeling about the guy, but her need to get high ultimately overpowered her sense of fear.

“Can you take me to meet some friends so I can tell then where I’m going to be?” she asked.

The guy refused and, instead, drove her back to his house. It was a brown-colored brick house with an unattached garage at the end of a long driveway. There was a lot of stuff in the driveway and in the garage. There was also a table in the driveway with miscellaneous items on it, and some potted plants on the porch.

“You moving?” Teracita asked.

“Nah, my mom is having a yard sale,” he said, adding that the house belonged to his mother.

They walked around to the rear of the house and went into the kitchen through the back door. Teracita noticed a large wooden table and chairs, and a square wooden clock hanging on the wall. As she looked around, she also saw some brand-new Barbie dolls still in their boxes.

“Go on down into the basement,” the man said, pointing to the door.

Teracita did as she was told, and a few seconds later, her host joined her. Even though it was dark, Teracita could see a big bed and a long wooden table, with a lava lamp on it, as well as a barbell and a space heater. Clothes, used condoms, vibrators, dildos, as well as pornographic books and magazines, littered the carpeted floor. There was also some aluminum foil on a plate under the bed, with what Teracita thought was crystal meth.

A couple seconds later, the man came downstairs, grabbed Teracita from behind, and put a knife to her throat.

“You’re under arrest,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re under arrest for prostitution. Get the fuck out of your clothes,” he said. “I’m going to kill you, like I killed the rest of the girls.”

Frightened, Teracita started taking off her clothes.

“Do what I say, and I’ll think about letting you live and see your son.”

Teracita had just given birth and she was still wearing a tampon. She pulled the tampon out and threw it on the floor. The man kicked it, and it went under the bed. He then pushed Teracita down on the bed, put on a condom, and raped her anally and vaginally for the next six or seven hours. He placed Ben Wa balls—three small marble-size metal balls used for sexual stimulation—in Teracita’s vagina and anus. And he pulled her hair back and stuffed socks in her mouth, to keep her from screaming. Unable to ejaculate, the man became increasingly frustrated. He removed his condom, but he still couldn’t have an orgasm.

Finally he told Teracita to put her clothes back on.

“You won’t get into another car, will you?” he asked. “I should take your ass down to the station and let them book you on prostitution.”

The guy walked her to his truck and drove her back where he had picked her up. As soon as she got out of the truck, Teracita took off running.

A couple weeks later, Teracita saw her attacker again. He was driving the same truck. He looked in her direction, but he apparently didn’t recognize her. Angry, Teracita picked up a bottle and threw it at the truck. The guy just kept on driving.

Teracita gave police the names of three other women who had survived similar incidents, one of whom was in the same prison.

A couple weeks later, police went back to the correctional facility to talk to Teracita again. They were trying to locate Jeannette, the woman Teracita had told them was in the facility with her. The detectives pulled out a photo of a woman named Jeannette Smith, who was in the Dwight Correctional Center, but Teracita said she wasn’t the right Jeannette. The Jeannette she knew was real short and had dark skin. Her nickname was “Nett,” and she lived near Starr Court.

According to Teracita, Jeannette had been picked up in Peoria by a man in a newer model blue or turquoise truck. Despite Teracita’s information, detectives were never able to find Jeannette.

Police then showed Teracita two photo lineups. The first lineup contained a picture of a man named Larry Bright, with long hair, and the second lineup included a photo of Larry, but with shorter hair.

The second Teracita saw Larry’s face, she pointed at the photo and said, “This is the guy. That’s him. I will never forget his face. That’s him. That’s him. But when he raped me, his hair wasn’t that long.”

When Teracita looked at the photo of Larry with shorter hair, she again recognized him. “That’s him,” she said. “That’s the guy who raped me. That’s the guy I threw the bottle at. I’m positive it’s the same guy. His hair was longer in front like the other picture, but it was shorter on the sides. Not as short as this.”

The detectives asked Teracita if she had seen any Peoria newspapers while she was in jail, or if she had talked to her family about the deaths of the black women in Peoria. She said she hadn’t read any newspapers or talked to her family about the other women. In fact, she said she hadn’t even told her mother that she had been raped.

But she did tell her friend Tarzie.

Just after Christmas, Tarzie contacted the police to tell them what he knew about the night Teracita was assaulted. He said that sometime in the summer, he was near his house on West Kettelle Street, and he saw Teracita walking down the street. He also saw a gray or black Blazer in the area, but he didn’t see Teracita get in the truck. When he looked up, he saw the Blazer driving away, and Teracita was nowhere around. The next time he saw Teracita, she told him she had been raped by the guy in the Blazer. She told Tarzie she thought she knew the guy, and that’s why she got in his truck.

“She was crying and acting like something very bad happened,” Tarzie told police. “I don’t know anything else about what happened, because that’s all she told me.”

Around the same time they talked to Teracita, members of the task force got a tip that a thirty-five-year-old prostitute named Vickie Bomar had recently been picked up by a man who took her to his house and raped her. Vickie didn’t report it to the police because the man had threatened to kill her, and she was afraid.

On November 9, Sergeant Scott Cook, of the Peoria Police Department, went to talk to Vickie at the South Side Mission. Vickie agreed to talk to him.

It was sometime in the middle of July. She was walking near the Harrison Homes, a public housing development built in 1942. She was trying to score some crack cocaine. As she was walking, a white man in a truck pulled up to her and said he was looking to party. He said he had $200 in cash and an eight ball of coke. As soon as Vickie heard those magic words, she hopped into his truck and they drove to his house.

It was a small house with a porch, almost like a summer cottage, that sat behind a larger house. The property was partially concealed by a tall wooden privacy fence. The man opened the gate and the pair walked into the one-room house. There was a bed off to the right, and a couch, coffee table, and some other furniture on the left. There was no kitchen. The door to the bathroom was closed.

Vickie pulled her crack pipe out of her purse. She was looking forward to getting high. Suddenly the guy started talking.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you,” he said.

Vickie figured him for a cop, since he was reading her rights to her.

“You know, I’m going to give you a break tonight,” he said. “I’m off duty and I don’t feel like going to the office and doing paperwork.”

Vickie headed for the door, but the guy pulled a knife on her.

“I won’t hurt you, if you do what I tell you,” he said. “Take off your clothes.”

“But you’re a police officer,” Vickie said, trying to understand what was happening. Scared out of her mind, and afraid she was going to die, Vickie took off her clothes.

“Now get into the bed. I’m going to fuck you.”

Vickie did as she was told. The man started kissing her and sucking on her. He attempted to rape her. He thought he was penetrating her, but he wasn’t. After about twenty minutes, the man told her to turn over, because he wanted to screw her in her ass. Vickie knew her life was on the line, but there was no way she was going to let this guy rape her. She had a plan.

“I have to use the bathroom really bad,” she said. “Please just let me go. I have to go bad. Please.”

Finally, after seven or eight minutes of pleading, he let her go.

Once inside, Vickie locked the door. The bathroom looked like it was being remodeled. She sat down on the floor, with her back against the door, and her feet against the sink. She picked up a board from the floor and put it behind her head, just in case he tried to force his way in.

The guy was getting impatient.

“Come out of there now,” he screamed.

“No, I’m not coming out.”

The man started kicking the door, trying to get it open. After a few minutes, he gave up.

“Come out, and I’ll take you home,” he said.

Knowing she had no choice but to believe him, Vickie got up and slowly opened the door. She walked out of the bathroom, holding the board for protection. She was shocked to find that the guy was already dressed. She was even more shocked when he let her put her clothes back on. She was in such a hurry to get the hell out of there that she forgot to put her bra on. While Vickie was getting dressed, the guy was going through her purse, probably looking for drugs or money.

Finally the guy led her out to his truck. When he opened the driver’s-side door to get in, Vickie took off. He yelled at her to stop, but she kept running. Just then, one of the guy’s neighbors, Joyce, pulled into her driveway and got out of her car. The guy jumped in his car and raced away.

Vickie ran over to the woman. She said she had been raped and needed help. Joyce offered to call the police, but Vickie, who had an outstanding warrant for her arrest, said no. She told Joyce the guy was a cop, so what good would it do to call them, anyway? Joyce told her he wasn’t a cop, then offered to drive Vickie home.

After giving her statement to Cook, Vickie told him she wanted to get into some kind of drug rehabilitation program. So he made some calls and brought her to Chestnut Health Systems in Bloomington.

The next day Cook and Captain Bobby Henderson went back to the facility to show Vickie a photo lineup of six men, one of whom was Larry Bright.

“That’s him. That’s him. That’s him right there!” Vickie screamed, pointing to Larry’s picture.

The police decided they needed to record Vickie’s statement, so they brought her to the Bloomington police station, reinterviewed her, then took her back to the health-care facility.

On November 11, police arrested Larry Bright for unlawfully restraining Vickie Bomar and brought him back to the Peoria County Sheriff’s Office for questioning.

Deputy Dave Wilson spoke with Larry Bright in the detectives’ bureau about the incident. After Wilson read Larry his Miranda warnings, Larry said he understood his rights and agreed to talk to Wilson and PCSO detective Cy Taylor, who was also in the room. The interview covered a wide range of subjects, including Larry’s dating habits, his drug and alcohol use, and even the kind of cigarettes he smoked.

During the interview Larry told police that he had lived at his current address for a little over a year, and he had lived on West McClure Avenue before that. Larry had also live in Canton and Yates City at different times in his life. He had been born in California and had moved to Morton, Illinois, when he was a young boy. He lived in Morton until he finished eighth grade. Then his family moved to Tremont, where he attended high school, although he dropped out during his senior year. His brother, Jerry, still lived in Morton, and his mother lived in the house in front of his house on West Starr Court in Peoria.

Wilson asked if he had ever lived in Racine. Larry admitted he had, but he said he had almost forgotten about it. Larry told police he had lived in Racine for about four months. While there, he stayed with his half sister, Monica, and worked for a company named Holton Brothers.

When asked if he had ever been with a black prostitute, Larry said he had not. In fact, he said, the first time he had been with a prostitute was three months earlier, when he had picked up a white girl named Latisha and took her to his house, where they had sex. Larry said he picked up Latisha at Woody’s Bar in his blue Dodge Dakota truck. Larry told police his mother owned a Dodge Durango, but he never drove it. She used to own a gray Chevy Blazer, but she sold it a couple weeks earlier. Larry insisted he had never picked up a black prostitute, and he had never had any problems with prostitutes.

Wilson asked Larry if he knew any of the black girls who had been murdered or had gone missing recently. Larry looked at the police photographs of the girls and said the only one who looked familiar was Tamara Walls. He added that he might have seen her before, but he had never dated her. Larry said the only black girl that he ever dated was a girl named Ernestine. He had met her at a bar about nine or ten months earlier and had partied with her. Although he had sex with her, he never brought her to his house, because his mother wouldn’t have approved of him having any kind of a relationship with a black woman.

Larry also talked about his drug use. He said he occasionally used marijuana and had last used crack cocaine about a year earlier. About four or five years earlier, he had gone through a rehab program for an addiction to crack.

Wilson and Taylor also learned that Larry liked to fish, and that he had caught a forty-five-pound flathead catfish in the Mackinaw River, near a broken bridge. He liked to fish for bass so much that he used to be a member of a local fishing club.

Wilson asked Larry if he would be willing to provide DNA to help them with the investigation, and if he’d allow them to search his house. Larry said he’d have to talk with his attorney first.

After Larry was taken to his cell, Taylor stayed in the interview room while lab officers collected the cigarette butts from Larry’s cigarettes, as well as the new plastic cup that Larry had used, so they could be submitted for DNA testing.

The same day thirty-eight-year-old Peter Morton called the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office and spoke to Detective Cy Taylor. Police had been trying to track Morton down for about a week. They had received a tip on the Crime Stoppers line from a woman who believed Morton was responsible for the murdered and missing women in Tazewell and Peoria Counties.

The caller said Morton lived with his mother. She also said Morton often traveled to Peoria to pick up drugs, as well as prostitutes, and then he brought them back to his house. The caller said he once told her that he hit a black man in Wisconsin with his car, then left the scene.

“His family has real issues,” she said. “I think Pete could be doing these things to these women.”

Sometime after getting the call, Taylor went out to Morton’s home and spoke with his mother. She said Peter wasn’t living with her at that time, but she’d give him the message.

As the saying goes, Peter Morton’s rap sheet was as long as his arm. A look at his criminal history painted a picture of a man who had been in and out of prison for much of his life on charges ranging from driving under the influence (DUI) to driving on a revoked or suspended license, from criminal destruction of property to aggravated battery on a police officer and a firefighter, and domestic battery.

After speaking to Taylor on the phone, Morton agreed to meet him at the Field Shopping Center in Morton. The two talked in Taylor’s squad car.

“I’m involved with the investigation of six dead and four missing black women,” Taylor said, adding that he knew Morton was addicted to drugs.

“Yeah, I’m addicted to crack, and I used to get it on the south side of Peoria, but I’ve been clean for a couple weeks, and I’ve been going to church in Morton. But why are you talking to me?” Morton asked. “I’m not a killer.”

“Your name came up in our investigation as someone who frequented prostitutes and sometimes brought them home.”

“Sure, I traded drugs for sex, but I never brought a prostitute home. I partied with some girls at my house, but we didn’t have sex, and I don’t think they were prostitutes,” he said. “And I have a girlfriend now. It’s been a couple of years since I visited prostitutes. I only know them by Serena and Dannette. I don’t even know if those were their real names.”

Morton told Taylor he went to prison in January 2000 for driving on a revoked or suspended license and also for aggravated battery to a cabdriver. He was released in January 2001, but was hauled back to prison in November 2003 for violating his probation. He was released on parole in February 2004. Morton said the Department of Corrections (DOC) took his DNA, but he would provide it again, if necessary.

When Taylor asked Morton about the alleged hit-and-run accident in Wisconsin, he said he had never lived in that state. He said he had lived in San Antonio, Texas, for a short time, about four years earlier, and had lived in Illinois a year and a half to two years earlier when he was working for a siding company. For most of the past summer, he and his girlfriend had lived at the campgrounds at Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park in Goodfield, Illinois.

Taylor showed Morton pictures that had been published of the dead and missing black women, along with a recent newspaper article. When he came to Sabrina Payne’s photo, Morton asked Taylor if she was the woman who had been found about a mile from his house.

“Yes,” Taylor said.

“I don’t remember meeting any of these girls,” Morton said. “And I wouldn’t do anything in my own backyard.”

A couple months later, Taylor went to talk to Morton again, because he had received information that Morton and Larry Bright had been friends when they were younger.

“I heard you used to run around with Larry Bright. Do you know him?” Taylor asked after a brief greeting.

“Yeah, I do. We were close friends when we went to high school, until Larry went to prison. I saw his picture in the paper. Boy, it sure don’t look good,” Morton said, shaking his head.

“What do you mean?”

“For Larry, because of where some of the bodies were found,” Morton said. “Larry knows those places. I hope he didn’t do it, but it don’t look good.”

Morton agreed to take Taylor and Henderson, who had arrived a short time after Taylor, to some of the places where he and Larry used to hang out when they were teenagers. First he directed them to a pond on property belonging to Sal Nelson. The pond was east of Ritthaler Road, halfway between Allentown and Augustin Roads. The two boys used to take their girlfriends parking there. Sabrina Payne’s body was found not even a couple miles away.

When they got to the area, Morton pointed out Mud Creek. Morton and Bright used to camp and fish under Mud Creek Bridge, which was about one hundred yards from where Sabrina’s body was found.

Morton next took police across Augustin Road to a dirt lane, which he and Larry used to drive on when they were kids. The dirt lane ran north from Augustin Road to Allentown, just west of Mud Creek Bridge. Morton said he thought Nelson owned that property, too. He said Larry was also familiar with that area.

Morton then directed police to Broken Bridge, at the end of Herberger Road in Mackinaw. He said he and Larry used to jump from the bridge into the river. Just north of Broken Bridge was an old railroad right-of-way and an old gravel pit, where they used to ride four-wheelers.

At the end of Levee Road, a dead-end street, was another old bridge that had been a party spot when Morton and Bright were teenagers. Traffic to the bridge had been cut off for some time. Linda Neal’s body was found within a mile of the bridge.

Morton and Bright also used to party at a place near the old bridge called Pitzer’s Cabin. It was the place where he and Larry used to cross the Mackinaw River in their four-wheel–drive vehicles and party. Morton did his best to direct police to the area. After a couple wrong turns, Morton remembered where it was—near the levee on King Road, another dead end. Linda’s body was found on the north side of the levee on King Road.

Bright and Morton also partied at the east end of the levee on the north side of the Mackinaw River on Benson Road, as well as at the bridge over the river. The area was near Larry’s old house on Robin Hood Lane.

The next day Wilson brought Larry back to the detectives’ bureau to speak with him again about the investigation. Larry said he understood his Miranda rights as Wilson recited them, and he agreed to talk to him without an attorney. Captain Bobby Henderson, of the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office, was also present throughout the interview.

Wilson told Larry he didn’t think he was telling the truth when he said he had never been with Vickie Bomar. His less-than-truthful denials, coupled with Vickie’s description of him, his truck, and his house, added credence to her story. And Wilson said he had a hard time believing that Larry had never been with a black female other than Ernestine.

“I think Ms. Bomar was at your house at some point,” Wilson said.

Finally Larry gave in.

“Sometime in the middle of July, I did pick up a black prostitute, and it could have been her,” he said.

It was about ten at night. He was driving around the south end of Peoria, an area known for prostitution, in his blue Dodge Dakota when the woman flagged him down. After determining that he wasn’t a cop, she got into the truck and asked if he wanted to get high. He gave her fifty bucks to buy some crack cocaine, and she directed him to a house where she could get it.

But when she returned, Larry thought she had ripped him off, because she only had crack worth about $30 on her. Nevertheless, Larry took the woman back to his house, where they smoked the crack.

Larry had the woman perform oral sex on him, and when she was done, she wanted him to pay her $20 more for the sex. Larry told the woman he had already paid her by buying her the crack cocaine and kicked her out of his house. But before she left, she told him to pay her or he’d regret it.

Larry denied having any physical contact with the woman after she performed oral sex on him. And he said he never threatened her or displayed any weapons. When the woman walked out of his house, he followed her and asked her if she needed a ride somewhere. She told him no. Larry watched as she walked over to talk to one of his neighbors.

He told the detectives that the woman didn’t leave any clothing at his house. And he said he never told her he was a police officer, and he didn’t own a badge of any kind.

“You guys are welcome to look around my house, if you want to,” he said.

Wilson asked Larry if he had ever had any problems with any other black prostitutes he had picked up. He said that sometime back in April he had picked up another black prostitute in the south end of Peoria. The girl flagged him down and she was acting crazy. She got into his truck, and as he was driving back to his place, she continued to act nuts. All she wanted to do was get more dope. Larry stopped the truck somewhere on West Starr Court and told her to get out. She was so angry that she kicked the side of his door, putting a small dent in it.

“Do you remember how many black prostitutes you’ve been with?” Wilson asked.

“Over the last ten years, I guess I’ve been with about ten.”

Then Wilson showed Larry a number of photos of black women and asked him if he recognized any of them. Larry said he he might have been with one of the women, whose name was Julia. Larry explained he often took the women to the Townhouse Motel, and sometimes he took them back to his place. When asked if he knew Tonya Russell, he said no.

As the interview progressed, Wilson asked Larry if he had ever been married. He said he was divorced, and his ex-wife, Cathy Bishop, lived in Galesburg. Larry’s best friend, Dan Hosmer, also live in Galesburg. Then, maybe to show police he had nothing against black people, Larry said he had a friend named Harry Cannon, who was a black man. (Cannon was Larry’s crack supplier.) He said he last saw Harry a month earlier.

As he did the previous day, Wilson asked Larry, when had he lived in Racine. He said he had lived there for three or four months in the spring of 1999. Between 1999 and 2002, he went back occasionally to see his sister, Monica.

At the end of the interview, Wilson asked Larry if he would still be willing to let police look through his house and his truck. He agreed, so police drove him to his mother’s job to get the keys to his house from her. Then they took him to his house, where he signed a consent form to allow the search.

As the crime lab officers arrived to take photos of Larry’s house and collect possible evidence, Wilson went to look into Larry’s truck, but it was locked. Larry said his mother had the keys, but he gave Wilson permission to unlock it with a slim jim so the lab officers could process it.

After the search Wilson brought Larry to the courthouse for his first court appearance on the charge of aggravated unlawful restraint. Larry was released on $10,000 bond.

The next day PCSO deputy Doug O’Neill was notified by PCSO detective Dave Hoyle that investigators were searching Larry’s house on West Starr Court; they needed him to respond to process the scene.

When O’Neill arrived, the investigators told him that Larry had been arrested on a warrant for unlawful restraint. They also told him that Larry’s victim said she had been sexually assaulted.

As O’Neill walked around Larry’s apartment, Detective Cy Taylor pointed out some interesting items like a large flesh-colored dildo wrapped in a blue towel by the bed, a black bra in a laundry basket, and three shoes without shoelaces. O’Neill noticed tan or brown stains on the white sheet on the box spring, which was under the mattress. There was also a hitter pipe and a green leafy substance on the coffee table. In one corner of the room, O’Neill saw a copy of the Peoria Journal Star newspaper dated February 7, 2004. In the local section, there was an article about the death of Barbara Williams. O’Neill photographed the newspaper and the rest of the house before he went outside.

As O’Neill took pictures of the outside and inside of Larry’s truck, Detective Pat Kennedy, who was looking through it, found an advertisement for Camel cigarettes in the side panel of the passenger-side door. O’Neill also took swabbings from the steering wheel, gas pedal, driver’s-side door handle, brake pedal, and from the passenger-side door.

O’Neill collected two black floor mats, hairs and fibers from those floor mats, a dirty white towel, with pink flowers, that had red bloodlike stains on it, four pairs of gloves and four single gloves, as well as garbage and some personal items. He took those items and other items from Larry’s house back to the lab for processing.

At the lab Deputy Scott Gamboe examined the items that had been taken from Larry’s apartment before placing them into evidence. He noted that the laces were missing from two Brahma hiking boots. He also observed brownish stains on the fitted sheet and on the inside of a hooded gray sweatshirt. Also inside the sweatshirt were two strands of Chore Boy, a coarse scrubbing pad, often used to smoke crack cocaine.

Gamboe also saw a whitish stain and a darker stain on a green towel, and dark stains on two white bath towels and a red towel that had come from Larry’s apartment. When he examined a pair of leather work gloves, which had Velcro closures, he saw a grayish mass of what appeared to be fibers or hair. He also found what looked to be hairs stuck to the dildo.